I've been looking at your cards on eBay and I'd really love to get one. My question on the GTX 5xx is whether they're supported by Snow Leopard as Lion breaks my Maya installation! Please let me know, thank you.
No Snow Leopard support for GTX5xx cards. The GTX470 is the best choice for Snow Leopard, or one of our GTX480s that has been clocked down.
As far as "GPU manufacturers Not caring", ask yourself WHY Nvidia has had support for just about all of their cards in the OS for YEARS. 6 years ago I was tinkering with an AGP 7800GS in my G5. Low and behold, the device id of "F5" was in the Nvidia drivers. So I made the card work but the driver had a little glitch. Low and behold, the glitch got fixed next OS update.
The 7800GT in PCIE G5 had device id of "92", the "F5" was for the PCIE to AGP bridge chip ON AGP CARDS.. BUT SOMEONE HAD WRITTEN "F5" INTO OSX DRIVERS. Why oh why I wondered. They had also written "F2" into the drivers, this being bridge chip of 6600GT on an AGP card. Neither card had EVER appeared as an Apple card but there were those device ids.
So we were able to offer these cards for G4. High powered, (then) current cards that could run 30". And the only reason they worked was because someone SOMEWHERE was writing them into the drivers.
Same holds true today. Snow Leopard had drivers for Quadro 5000 and Quadro 6000 and Tesla cards. All anyone had to do was write an EFI for them. (or use ATY_Init) and they all worked.
I think Nvidia finally got tired of nobody noticing and finally added "ATY_Init" type functionality to their drivers for 10.7.3. And with next OS update Apple killed this function. So Nvidia had to release a patch AGAIN for 10.7.4.
It's pretty obvious that Nvidia went to the bother to write all of the drivers and Apple doesn't seem to want that.
The issue nobody wants is to deal with selling and offering customer service to 100's (or 1,000's) of people. At least once a week someone with a 1,1 or 2,1 buys an EFI64 card from us, despite warnings in the ads. They are sometimes indignant that I offered such a bewildering array of cards that confused them.
At least once a week now, someone gets SO EXCITED installing their card that they scrape off one or two of the tiny little capacitors along bottom edge of card that connect the little gold fingers of the PCIE slot with GPU. This happens when you miss the slot and instead scrape card against it. And again, these eager beavers expect that they can just "return" these broken cards and get a new one. They don't realize that this means someone else ends up stuck with a large box of "dead" cards that MIGHT be fixable with some hours spent in trace repair. 2 days ago someone got all upset that I wouldn't PAY for his return shipping for him to send me the card he killed. Personal Responsibility is not always rigorously adhered to.
Nvidia doesn't sell cards directly. They sell the GPU chips to "partners" who assemble the cards and market and ship them. EVGA agreed to sell Mac GTX285s. PNY sold Quadro 4000s. I understand why nobody else wants to bother selling them. The EFI32/64 thing marks a seemingly arbitrary line in the sand that makes stocking and supporting the cards MUCH more bothersome.
To the end user who bought a Mac Pro and whose card just died, all of the "Which Model?" and "What OS are you running?" "How many power cables are you currently using?" questions are just babble in the way of getting their machine working again. They want to click "BUY NOW" and have card show up and work with little thought or bother. Sadly it requires more investment than this.
Every 2009 MBP ever sold had only 1 possible configuration. The Mac Pro is a whole 'nother can'o'worms. Somewhere far away, a large building is full of people freshly employed by "Apple Customer Support". As they page their way through their support scripts, they need you to fit nicely into the pre-arranged categories. When you start telling them that you added a X5365 and ran the 2,1 firmware update and have an EFI32 flashed 8800GTX you really throw them for a loop. Every OFFICIAL Mac card has to be in those scripts. They are looking for any possible way to NOT spend hours on the phone with you figuring out that you are trying to run a 5870 in 10.4 in a 2006. So what do they do? They get to chuck you off the phone the second you admit it's a 2006 since the card lists "requires 2008 or later Mac Pro".
The fact is, most people are plenty smart to figure this stuff out themselves. A few minutes with Google can give you any answer you need. Apple doesn't want to support the hundreds of possible CPU/GPU combos. Nor does anyone else. This is where "Personal Responsibility" comes in. You can buy the Quadro 4000 and get official support or you can buy something else and use "google" and read forums.
Nvidia has stepped up to the plate in a big way. The fact that we are weeks away from GTX670/80 being genuinely useable is exciting and shows that SOMEONE IN SANTA CLARA GIVES A DAMN.
ATI/AMD has also changed their drivers in a more "shotgun" approach for cards in similar families. They "work" without EFI.
The writing is on the wall. The GPU companies care enough to write drivers. No "board partners" are interested enough to hire a Mac Support Staff and create the UPC numbers and convince retailers to create space on their shelves and agree to support for 2 years, etc.
As far as why Apple didn't include any new GPUs, they are in an odd spot. Last week I predicted that the "New" Mac Pro would not have GTX5xx or AMD 6xxx cards because the "New" Mac Pro was going to certainly be PCIE 3.0 and those cards are 2.0. Now I say the reverse, they couldn't use GTX5xx and AMD 6xxx because they are EOL, and they couldn't offer GTX6xx or AMD 7xxx because those are PCIE 3.0 and the creaky old Mac Pro is 2.0. That is just how they think. Apple may PRETEND to be oblivious but they know that "a 3 three year old computer, Now with Last Years Cards !!!" and "Current PCIE 3.0 PCIE GPUs strike fear in your projects as they power through them at 2.0 speeds !!" aren't selling slogans.
You know, like Why did`nt the chicken cross the road. Get it. Oh never mind.
